


Rey Isn't Dead

by WelcomeToTheBadlands



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alice Isn't Dead vibes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Rey, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Corruption, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Alice Isn't Dead, Limetown vibes, Mystery, Road Trips, Sleep Deprivation, Southern Gothic Vibes, Trauma, Violence, Virgin Ben Solo, inspired by a podcast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22669234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WelcomeToTheBadlands/pseuds/WelcomeToTheBadlands
Summary: The day that Rey died, everything changed for Ben. His life seemed to come to a halt, and he felt like he was moving through water with every waking moment. What happens when Ben finds a mysterious flash drive that shows evidence that Rey is alive and well? What will he do?
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 22
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

On the day that Rey died, the sun was shining, and she and Ben had plans. They were going to see a movie together that night. That was the night that Ben was going to tell her that he had feelings for her and hoped that she felt the same way about him. He knew something was wrong when Rey was five minutes late. Rey was famous for arriving to things twenty minutes early, waiting out in the parking lot until the right time came, and then getting out of her car right on time. He texted her twice. Just asking where she was. He didn’t think anything of it. Maybe she was having a bad day, even though she always called when she was going to be even thirty seconds late.

He didn’t get a response. That was the second thing that made him worry. And then thirty minutes passed by and his mother called him. “Ben,” She sounded like she had been crying, and something in Ben’s stomach dropped. He didn’t answer her or ask what was wrong, she continued. “Ben, you need to get home right now. There are police—in front of Rey’s house. Ambulance too.”

“What?”

“There’s an ambulance, the policeman said that she called a suicide hotline. Ben—” That was the day that everything changed.

__

_Rey Johnson was different than a lot of people. Ben had noticed that about her the day that the two of them met. At the time, they were both children. She was stowed away in a nook of the local library that Ben spent most of his time in, and she was reading a book on Forensics. She was ten years old. Ben had been reading a book about Arthurian Legend and he didn’t even know what Forensics were at the time._

_It took everything in him to approach her, everything in him. When he did, she glanced up at him with those big doe eyes of hers, and moved over in the large bean bag that she had been sitting down in. “Do you want to read with me?” She asked._

_“Uh, sure.” He said._

_He didn’t know that would be the start of a friendship that would last years after that._

__

**Entry #1: January 1 st, 2020**

_My therapist told me that I should start recording my feelings, to start the grieving process. So I thought that I would try it. I was going to do that—and in a way I still am. Today was supposed to be the one year anniversary of Rey’s death. I wasn’t going to do anything, because it’s been painful. But I got something today that I think needs to be recorded somewhere._

_Today, someone dropped a flash drive off in my mailbox. It’s security footage of a store. And for a while, I didn’t know why it was in my mailbox, or what I was looking for. But then I saw her. I saw Rey._

[END RECORDING]

The day had started out with Ben wanting to drink. That had become a habit that he was trying to rid himself of recently. Instead of trying to forget the good memories that he had with Rey, he wanted to hold onto them. So, he ignored his instincts and got dressed. He had to take care of himself somehow, after all. It took more energy than he thought it would, doing this.

Some days he felt like he was moving through water, and it took everything in him to focus.

**Mom: Hey, sweetheart. We were in town and I brought some meals for today that I thought you’d like to have. When would be a good time for us to come over.**

**Ben: Thanks. Whenever is fine.**

**Mom: Okay! Make sure you’re taking it easy today, sweetie. I’ll be over there in a few hours.**

__

_When Ben and Rey were in high school, Rey was bored. Ben could see it all the time. She was in all AP classes and she didn’t struggle, at all. He had always been jealous of her for that, although she always told him that it was nothing to be jealous of. “Just wait for the burnout,” She said, “I bet as soon as I get to college, I’m going to flunk out. I’m not that smart.”_

_“You shouldn’t say stuff about yourself like that, you are smart.”_

_“Okay—yeah, in a sense I’m smart. But like, not you—smart. You keep pushing, even when things don’t come easy to you, and you master it. That’s the kind of smart that will get you somewhere, Ben. I wish I could do that—care like that—but I’ve never been really good at that.”_

_“I think you’ll find the thing that you care about, that you’ll push for. It’s just a matter of time.”_

_“Maybe you’re right,” She said. “I don’t know.”_

__

Ben was kind of glad that his mother didn’t stay long. She dropped off the meals that she had made for him and gave them the instructions to heat them up, and then left. Telling him that he looked tired and that he should rest. He promised her that he would and laid back down on his couch, staring up at the ceiling. At one time, before he had redone the ceiling, he would just sit there and count all the cracks in it. Trying to distract himself from thoughts he would have, where he would wonder what would happen in that alternate reality where Rey wasn’t dead.

One where they’d gone to the movies and then to dinner later and Ben had told her, exactly how much he cared about her. How he had feelings for her. Even if that day had gone bad, in this better version of his world, Rey would still be alive. Even if she didn’t share his feelings, if she felt awkward and she never talked to him again, he would still get to know that she was out there and she was living her best life.

Ben had wished that he hadn’t sealed up the cracks in his ceiling, so he had something to do. He wouldn’t have to think about how it didn’t make sense, that Rey would even think about killing herself. Because she told Ben everything, and Ben knew for a fact that she thought highly of herself, as she should’ve. And the suicide note that had been left behind.

It didn’t look like her handwriting, and it didn’t feel like her writing. At all. Plus, there was a fact that they couldn’t find a body. Rey had supposedly told the 911 operator that she was at her house when everything had gone down, and she wasn’t. There had been a month of searching, but no one had found her body and people just gave up. Shortly after she went missing, her stepdad, Djin Jarren, was found dead in his apartment.

Also, suicide. It just didn’t make sense to Ben, and he was thinking about it again and trying to rationalize it. Trying to figure out a way to make it make sense. His therapist told him that this would happen. That after a loved one committed suicide, especially in the way that Rey supposedly had, the people around that person would try and make it make sense. They’d go from grieving to rationalizing, to grieving again. And they might even hate the person who had committed suicide.

Ben didn’t hate Rey.

He could never hate her. He just wanted to know what happened. Was there something that he missed? Was he such a bad friend that he couldn’t tell that she was having mental health problems? That she couldn’t feel like she could talk to him? He wanted to know.

God, he had to get up. This wasn’t a good way to be spending his time, thinking about her like this. He got up and made himself lunch. Then finally, ventured outside and checked the mail. He was expecting to see nothing in there. There was usually nothing but the occasional bill waiting for him. But there, waiting for him, was one black flashdrive. A silver sharpie had written on it. R.J. There was nothing else on it.

He took it out of his mailbox, not sure what to think, and looked around to see if the person who had left it there was close by. They weren’t. Ben walked inside and shut the door behind him, the little plastic rectangle in his hand. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it. Receiving something that cryptic only happened to people in movies, right? He tried not to be freaked out. Out of his better judgment, not knowing what was on this thing or if it could completely fry his computer, he immediately pulled out his laptop and plugged it in.

There was only one thing on it. A file marked December 26th, 2019. He opened it, and found a video waiting for him. It was a rather big file and took a second to load. But it was the security footage for some convenience store. And for a while nothing happened, Ben found himself questioning why he was watching it in the first place.

He turned it on to 2.5 speed and then he saw it. Near the end of the tape.

It was her.

It was Rey.


	2. Chapter 2

_“Can you pass me a light?” The low thump of the bass from the speakers inside of Poe Dameron’s house shook the back porch._

_“You really shouldn’t start smoking,” Ben had said, “It’s bad for you.” Rey gave him this look, like she thought it was cute that he was concerned for her._

_“I know,” She told him. She lit the cigarette and took a drag, “don’t worry about me, Ben.” She smiled at him and Ben felt his heart skip ahead. “I won’t be smoking in three months’ time,”_

_“After your trip,” Ben said._

_“After my trip,” Rey repeated._

_“Where are you going?” Where would she be going where she would be required to smoke anyways? Ben’s head swam with so many questions, but he didn’t ask._

_“Dubai,” She said smoothly._

_“And what are you doing again?”_

_“Photos for that travel magazine that I told you about,” Before Ben could ask why she would need to smoke she answered his question, “My host is a fan of cigarettes, cigars. The premium kind of tobacco, getting used to it before I go there and have to deal with the smoke for three months.”_

_“I guess that’s smart,” He said._

_“Yeah,” She said. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t get addicted to things.”_

__

**Entry #2: January 2 nd, 2020**

_There has to be a reason I was given this. There has to be a reason. I looked at the footage so many times, because maybe it wasn’t her. She’s supposed to be dead after all, but that was her. She walked in, wearing sunglasses. Grabbed an Arizona tea and a bag of hot Cheetos. Paid, and then left. It was her. Rey isn’t dead._

[END RECORDING]

There was no right way to feel about finding out your best friend isn’t dead. Panic, hope, anger. Ben felt it all. All of it. Most of all, he was scared. Really scared. Rey had been alive all of this time and he had never heard from her. So, something happened. There was a reason why she hadn’t reached out to him.

She was running from someone.

__

_Three months passed by and Rey was right on time at the airport. She texted Ben and told him that she’d be home in two hours and fifteen minutes. Ben had always told Rey that one day she was going to be late, and he would laugh. She never was. Still, Ben set his timer to go off in two hours and fifteen minutes. She was there knocking at his door by the time his alarm went off._

_He opened the door. Her smile always seemed to be able to melt his heart. He had no idea how she had the power to do that._

_“I missed you,” She had this look in her eye. One that told him that she had a bad couple of days._

_“I missed you too,” He told her, “I missed you so much.” They embraced and to Ben it felt right. “How was your trip?”_

_“It was fine, I mainly just wanted it to be over. To be here again,”_

_“Well, I’m glad you’re here now.” He said. “I made you lunch,”_

_“You’re an angel,” She said. “Fuck, I missed your cooking.”_

_“Come in.” He told her._

__

She was running. Ben didn’t really know what was happening, or what was going to happen. He watched the footage so many times that he couldn’t go to sleep because it was seared into his brain. He saw it when he closed his eyes. Her walking into that gas station and buying food before leaving. It was such a normal thing, except the time stamp said it was nighttime and she walked in wearing sunglasses. She didn’t look panicked; she wasn’t looking over her should constantly. But her movements were stiff and not like her. She was always so sure of herself when she walked, but she was also always relaxed and calm.

Then something happened. Like a sudden spark of something. He got up and he started looking. Rey’s house was now vacant, and locked, but everything of hers was in a storage box that Ben paid for. One storage box. He had remembered wondering why she didn’t have more things. Why her life could only be reduced to one storage box full of her things. He was pretty sure that she had more things—she should have had more things, right?

He couldn’t help but wonder if there were things missing from her belongings, but now he wondered if those things could help him find her. The things that he had and didn’t have. Maybe it could help him find her. He got in his car and he started driving. He felt like he was driving forever, when it had only been twenty minutes. He couldn’t get there fast enough. When he got there and opened the storage box, he found everything pristine, in the place where he had put it all.

He started looking.

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for at first.

There was no map or compass to point in the direction of Rey. No, nothing would be that glaringly obvious. Although he wished it would be. Everything that Rey owned, or that he managed to save was minimalistic and clean. He didn’t know what he was looking for, really. And then he found it.

Her journal.

The one thing that had always stuck out the most about Rey is how much she wrote, and she wrote a lot. On flash cards, on scraps of receipt paper, in journals, on the back of napkins, in the back of books. When he had been getting all of her stuff, he remembered only finding three journals, when knew that Rey had more of them than just that. He saw her with a new one practically every other week. Some of the ones that she had filled up were just gone.

They were just gone. He wasn’t sure how to explain it, exactly, but looking at how things were going now, he was pretty sure that someone had taken some of her things. He couldn’t dwell on that possibility right now. Instead, they picked up the brown, leather bound book, just to realize that it had a padlock on it. Now that he thought about it, all of Rey’s journals had locks on them. He wasn’t sure what the password was, but he tried. First the obvious, her birthday, the birthday of one of her past dogs, the day she saw Galaxy Wars for the first time.

None of those work.

For a second, he considered looking around the storage container more before he tried something. His birthday. It worked. He is not sure what he was looking for as he stared down at pages upon pages of numbers. No letters at all. He didn’t have time to unpack that here, he stuffed it in his bag, along with the two other bound notebooks. He looked for more things, something that pointed him to Rey. He found nothing, so he told himself that he would come back tomorrow and look for more of Rey’s belongings that might bring him more clarity towards where Rey could be.

__

_Rey Johnson was not the type of person to sugarcoat things, or pay people compliments, or be overly sweet. So, when she said, “Have I ever told you how glad I am that you’re my friend?” He knew that something was wrong._

_“Who are you and what have you done with Rey Johnson?” Rey stuck out her tongue at him, nudging him with her shoulder._

_“I’m not kidding,” Rey told him, “I’m glad you’re my friend.” The old recording of Nancy Drew was paid no attention as Rey and Ben stared at each other for a bit. It was intense, and Ben could not help but wonder what was going on in Rey’s head. There was always something so noticeably dark about her eyes, so unreadable about her expression, and even though Ben and Rey told each other everything, he could tell that there was still so much about Rey that he didn’t know about._

_“Are you okay?”_

_“Yeah,” Rey said. “I just really missed you on my trip,”_

_“Well, you’re here now.” Ben tried to reassure her of the anxiety that he could see brimming in her eyes._

_“Yeah, I’m here now.” She told him._

____

He had gotten home and sat in his care for about twenty minutes before getting out and heading back to his door. For some reason, he felt like his skin was crawling. Ben felt like he was going to vomit, not sure how he was supposed to process everything. But he couldn’t feel sorry for himself or panic, he just had to figure out what was going on. That was the best thing that he could do right now.

So, he took out the unlocked notebook and stared at the first page for a while. It took a minute to realize what was going on, that there was a specific way that the numbers were arranged, and this was some sort of code. It seemed so inexplicably Rey that Ben couldn’t help but smile for a little bit.

__

_Rey had been barely skating by in math all of her life, but it wasn’t because she was bad at math. It was because she just didn’t care. Her teachers tried to push her to do better, but all of the work that they gave her wasn’t engaging. She was definitely not the type of student that cared about grades because ultimately, they didn’t matter. She told Ben that grades weren’t an actual qualifier of how smart or dumb a person was. He always agreed with her. Still, it didn’t help the fact that he thought it was kind of ridiculous that she got by with a seventy with math and was coming up with ciphers and codes and researching that sort of thing._

_Ben had asked her about it once, and she had shown him a simple code. One where numbers corresponded with letters, but in a reversed way. Where the number twenty-six would be A instead of Z and one was Z instead of A. Sometimes they passed notes in this, that way, when teachers would inevitably catch them, they wouldn’t know what they were saying and thus they would be spared from humiliation because of that._

_That became their language, for a while._

____

It doesn’t take long for Ben to crack the code. The only thing that’s frustrating about it is that it’s tedious work more than anything else. They were all addresses. All of the ones that he had translated so far, so written down in scribbled numbers that were bunched up in the margins of her journals. There was no indication as to why there were addresses in this book or what these addresses were. There was only one to figure out why she had hundreds upon hundreds of addresses written down like this.

All of Rey’s notebooks had Ben’s birthday as the code for the lock. He had no idea what he was looking for, still. More addresses. Some notes. A grocery list. Some details about a building. Details about people. There should be something—something telling him what was going on. And then he finds it. On the last page of the last notebook he finds something that isn’t in code. It’s the description of something.

_The Don Quixote is a bar on sixth and third. There’s a poorly constructed metal statue of a mariachi man on the outside of it. It’s red, like the color of a barn. The paint is peeling off the sides and I have to wonder when the last time this place got a visit from the health department. Maybe that’s why T.S and A.H use this as a meeting place, they keep any sort of authority away from them, they let them use this place as a business hub for all their criminal needs._

Then there was the address of the Don Quixote.

Ben decided that was where he would start.


	3. The Don Quixote

The Don Quixote was exactly like Rey described it. Its walls were a ruddy color of red, with peeling paint on the sides. It smells like cigarette smoke on the outside, and Ben couldn’t help but feel slightly nervous as he walked inside. The inside of the Don Quixote was exactly as anyone would expect to see when walking into a Mexican restaurant owned by white people. Stereotypical decorations and forcing their waiters to wear slightly racially insensitive outfits, even though all of them were also white.

“Hello, my name is Steve. How may I help you?”

“I’ll just take an appetizer of nachos and a sprite.”

“Okay, one appetizer of nachos and a sprite, coming up.” Ben sat there alone for a while, just people watching and looking around at his surroundings. He was just looking at a string of Christmas lights when a red headed man in all black walked in. He wasn’t sure why he caught Ben’s attention, but he did. Ben watched as he walked to the bar and ordered a drink, and then waited for another man. The two of them started talking in low and hushed voices, and Ben did his best not to stare at the two of them. If he leaned back just a little bit, he could hear them talking.

Just little bits of the conversation, but he clearly heard one thing. “Have you found her yet?” And then they started to talk more, moving into a back room where Ben couldn’t hear their voices. Ben felt like he was going to throw up by the time he got his nachos.

When Steve set his order down, Ben asked, “How long have you been working here?” He knew that it was a weird question to ask, but he still had to ask it. “Three years,” He said, “why?”

“I had a friend—she used to come here a lot, maybe you know her? Long brown hair—likes to wear floral prints a lot. She probably had a bunch of journals with her or something,”

“I think I remember someone like that,” He said. “She said her name was Kira?” Kira was the name of Rey’s Dungeon and Dragons character. She didn’t exactly like the game but she played because Ben liked it, and he didn’t have that many people to play with. So, she was here.

“Yeah, Kira.”

“Yeah, she was a good tipper. Liked to get a booth and just eat and write a lot,”

“Sounds like her.” He said.

“Well, tell Kira I said hi.”

“I will.”

__

_Rey was good at making people like her. It was something that Ben had never known how to do, she could get free movie snacks and get into places they shouldn’t have been allowed to go into because of the demeanor she had about her. The two of them did so many things just because Rey said that they were going to._

_A lot of the concerts that they got into were free, specifically because Rey told Ben they were going to get in, and they did. That meant that Rey was really good at lying._

_Very._

_Very good at lying._

_Sometimes it scared Ben how easily and confidently she could say something and make it believable. Ben was the exact opposite._

__

Ben had no idea how to go about everything next, so he just started by going to the nearest locations that Rey had written in her journal. Maybe, just maybe there was something there. Some of them were places that she and him had been together. Eventually he landed at an arcade that they used to go to when they were children. Something told him that he needed to go inside.

So, he did. The arcade had always been old, even when Rey and Ben were little kids. The building was falling apart, and some of the letters in the neon sign were shorted out so it read, ‘Partan Arade’ instead of ‘Spartan Arcade’. He felt like he was being hit with a wave of nostalgia he wasn’t really ready for when he walked inside. It looked the same as it had since when he and Rey were kids.

Like not a minute had gone by since Leia had driven the both of them here and given them forty bucks to get as many coins as they could and play Street Fighter for hours on end. He stood there for a minute and just looked around before going up to the attendant and asking, “Hey. So—this is a weird question, but have you seen a girl named Rey come through here recently, or—at all.” She looked at him wide eyed for a second and then spoke.

“Are you a cop?”

“What? No, I’m not a cop.”

“Okay then,” She stands there for a minute and said, “white lady with brown hair?”

“Yeah, that’s Rey.”

“It’ll be twenty bucks,”

“Are you serious?”

“Do you think minimum wage is twelve dollars around here? No it’s not, gotta eat somehow.”

“Fine, fine.” He shells out the twenty dollars. It’s a small price to pay for Rey.

“Thank you,” She grinned, “anyways. There was a girl named Rey around here about eight months ago, she said she was hiding from her abusive boyfriend. That he was a cop—I think she was lying, but I let her hang out here anyways because she seemed nervous. There was a lot of cars driving by, it was really weird. Around eleven, she left.”

“Did she tell you where she was going?” He asked.

“Are you sure you’re not a cop—or her boyfriend?”

“I’m not either of those things.”

“Oh,” She looked him up and down and said, “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

“I promise that I’m not a cop or her boyfriend or friend’s with her boyfriend.”

“That’ll cost another twenty dollars,” She tells him. He rolls his eyes but he shells it out anyways, and she tells him. “She asked how far of a drive it was from here to Salem,”

“Salem,”

“Yeah, not the Salem you’re thinking of. There’s a city not too far away called Salem. It’s about an hour away, after that she left.” That was a start, for once, Ben felt some form of hope. His chest tightened and he felt a rush of excitement. He was going to Salem. He was going to find Rey.


	4. Salem, Oregon Pt 1

When Ben packs a bag and starts driving to Salem, Oregon, he isn’t sure what to expect. Salem is the capitol city of Oregon—but he’s never been—despite having lived in Oregon all of his life. The more he thinks about how big it might me, the less hope he has on figuring out how to find Rey. He also starts to realize that there are blaringly obvious gaps in his knowledge when it comes to her, and he doesn’t even know what she did for a living. Rey had always seemed aimless—not really knowing what she wanted to do in life. But he knew that she worked. The thing was she never told him what she worked as, and he had never asked her about it. Now he was kicking himself, wishing that he had, again wondering if he was a bad person for not knowing this about Rey.

Maybe if he had learned this he would have a better chance of finding her. Now he was struggling to find her—or some part of her in a large city that he had no idea where to begin to look. So he just thought to himself, what part of this place would Rey most likely go to, where would she stay? And he found himself in a smaller part of the city, that gave off a vibe that he could only describe as having a small town aesthetic, and not the kind that would attract college hipsters on the weekends.

__

_Rey looked tired. Ben had noticed that a lot lately, she was running on empty, two redbulls a day and her hands would shake. “Are you okay?” He would ask her. She always managed to avoid the question in a way that Ben wasn’t sure how she had mastered so easily. Other times she would flash a smile and tell him that yes, she was fine, she was just tired. But he saw that she was starting to lose sleep, and it worried him._

_It wasn’t his place though. He was her friend, and that was all he was. It wasn’t until one night that she told him that she was worried about something. “What are you worried about?” He had asked her._

_“A lot,” She told him, which was something just vague enough to raise more questions but this answer was typical of Rey. Ben knew not to ask more of her until she was ready to say something herself. “There’s just a lot on my mind right now—I just—I’m not happy.” She admitted._

_It was the first time that she had ever said something like that to Ben. “You’re going to college and honestly—I have no idea what the fuck I want to do with my life,”_

_“Honestly,” Ben sat down next to her, “I don’t either.”_

_“Well, you’re studying business so at least you have some idea what you want to do. I don’t and I feel like at this point in my life there should be at least something that interests me, but I feel like there’s nothing that’s really there for me. All I do is write and read and I’m good at that, but like—what use is that? Everyone can do that.”_

_“Well, actually no. People can read and write, but not a lot of them can do it well. I’ve read some of the stuff you write, and it’s genius stuff. You can make nonfiction stuff sound interesting, which is honestly really hard to do. You have talents, Rey. You’ll find something that you want to do—no one really knows for sure what they’re going to end up doing. Honestly, I don’t even know if I’m going to end up doing whatever I’m going to be studying.”_

_Rey is silent for a minute before she says, “I guess that’s true.”_

_There’s a comfortable silence between the two of them before she said, “I can’t believe I only have you for the summer before you head off.”_

_“I know,” The truth was, Ben was scared too. He was really scared._

_“You told me once that you would never leave me,” Rey looked at him pointedly._

_“And I won’t. I’ll be five hours away, yeah, but we’ll see each other all the time.” He wanted to tell her just how much he loved her, how he wished that she would come with him and they could be together, but he didn’t._

_“Right.”_

_“You’re not going to leave me, are you?” He asked her in return._

_“No,” She gives him a smile that reassures him. “I won’t.”_

____

Every building looked like it was falling apart, and Ben was pretty sure that he hadn’t seen anyone in the first ten minutes that he started driving through the nameless city, trying to locate a motel that looked just shady enough to let him book a room that night. He had a vague sense of unease creeping up his back as he drove through the town, feeling like something was wrong, he couldn’t tell what it was though, and that was bugging him. A lot.

Was he being watched? Ben found himself checking his rearview mirror. There was nothing there, though. He wondered if it was just paranoia that was getting to him or if it was something completely different. There was really no way to tell. But he pulled in to a Motel 8, and booked a room for the next three days. In reality, he had no idea how long he was going to have to stay there, or what he needed to do, but he decided that this was a place to start.

The room smelled of cigarette smoke and a damp rot, which Ben expected from a Motel 8, he told himself to find a Walmart before he went to sleep and go by himself some different pillows. He did not need to be catching any sort of lice at a time like this. For a minute, he stood in his room with his bag, taking it in, not really sure what to do next. It was like a spark of motivation just found him, and he started to move. He plugged his phone up and took out his laptop, setting up a mobile hotspot instead of connecting to the motel wifi.

Then he took out Rey’s journal, and he started looking. There were different locations within Salem that she had written down. One was a torn down building, then there was a restaurant closer to the middle of the capitol, and then a cemetery.

His head was swimming with questions. Why was Rey at the Don Quixote? What did she hear? Are all of these addresses connected to each other? If so, was she investigating something? Why would she be investigating something? If she was investigating something, how dangerous was it that she or the thing she was investigating ended up faking her death?

All of this was making his heart race so fast—he wasn’t sure he could cope with it. He had to get up, he had to do something. So he got off his laptop and put it in his bag, putting Rey’s journal underneath the mattress on his bed before going back out and to his car. The first place he decided to go—the abandoned building. It was a forty minute drive from here, and in the seedier part of the neighborhood that he was in, so Ben felt his paranoia at an all time high as he parked in a place that was hard to see, looking up at the place that Rey had been. “This is definitely a crack den,” He muttered to himself. “I can’t believe I’m going into a fucking crack den.”

__

_Rey worked a lot of odd jobs. She had told him that once—and he was kind of weirded out by just how much she worked, but she seemed to like it a lot, and that made him happy. She was doing something and she seemed to be enjoying it too. The thing was it was that much harder to figure out when the two of them could meet up. This was one of the days where they could, meeting in a Starbucks and ordering the same thing that both of them always ordered._

_Rey looked even better than Ben had remembered her that day, and that’s when he knew, he was in love. She laughed and it was like the audio equivalent of sunshine and flowers and he was just done for. Eveb moreso than he thought before now. He’d do anything for her. Anything._

__

“What the fuck, Rey?” He muttered to himself as he headed towards the abandoned building, “What the fuck?”


	5. Chapter 5

_“Are you okay?” Was something that Ben became accustomed to asking Rey as they got older. After he went to college, he would come back to see her whenever he could, and she always seemed a little bit off._

_“Yeah,” She said. She glanced over her shoulder one more time and kept walking with Ben. “I’m fine, just tired.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“How’s life been going recently?”_

_“Tiring,” She said, “I’ve been doing a bit of everything, whatever pays the bills you know? God, it’s so fucking boring. I think this is the first time that I’ve been out in a long time.”_

_“Well, I hope that I’m good enough company.” Rey smiled up at him when he said that._

_“Of course, you’re more than good company.” She said._

____

Ben has never been anywhere near any sort of drug in his life. So, when he starts heading toward the house, he’s freaking out on the inside. But he knew that it was for a good cause. He told himself that he needed to calm down, because if anyone would be suspicious about him and he got into a fight, there was no way that he was going to find Rey.

So he went into the building, trying to stay as calm as he possibly could. Rey would do the same thing for him, he thought to himself.

He found himself on guard as he found an entrance that wasn’t riddled with broken glass and old used needles, and he went inside. He was glad to find that he wasn’t immediately jumped as he went inside. There were a few people laying down. Ben tried his best not to pay attention to any of them.

There had to be some sort of reason that Rey would have gone here, and it wasn’t for drugs. He knew at least that much about Rey. The lighting was dim and low and there was a stench about the place. Ben’s eyes roamed around the place as he looked for something that could be of interest.

Ben wasn’t sure that he would find anything of interest, and then he hears a voice. “Hey, what are you doing here?” Ben turns, and sees a girl who was sitting down in the next room of the abandoned building, huddled up in a coat.

“I—”

“You look like a fucking narc,” The girl got up and Ben could see her better, “what do you want?”

“I’m not a narc,” Ben said, he took a deep breath in and steeled himself. The girl in front of him had pale skin and dark grey eyes that almost looked dead. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Oh really, to arrest?”

“No, my best friend went missing and she was here at one point. Dark hair, brunette, about five six, five seven. I just want to know if you’ve seen her and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t.” The woman said. “How do I know that you’re not some creepy stalker pimp looking for this girl?”

“The first thing you said was that I look like a narc, I can’t look like a narc and be a pimp at the same time, it doesn’t work like that. Besides, I have pictures on my phone.” He took his phone out and flipped to a picture of the two of them that his mother had taken while they were getting snacks at a drive in movie theatre, and then another picture of Rey.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“She’s my best friend,” Ben shook his head, “I’ve known her since childhood. We literally grew up together.” The girl looked a little bad and then nodded.

“Yeah she was here a while back, she came to talk to me. Said her name was Reyna or some thing like that?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. He wondered why she had been using an alias, but he didn’t make note of that when this girl was talking. He was more curious about why she was here. “What did she want to know about?” The girl glanced around and then sighed.

“Are you sure you’re not a narc?”

“I’m not,”

“Then do you have a twenty on you? Because my little sister’s been dopesick for weeks and it’s getting really bad. Trying to ween her off the shit sucks, can’t go cold turkey.” Ben took out another twenty, wondering if this was going to wipe him clean.

“I’ll give you this after you tell me what happened when _Reyna_ met with you.”

The girl sighed. “Fine, you know that you’re an asshole right?”

“I just want to find out what happened to my friend,”

“Right. Whatever. She came in and asked me about where I used to work.”

“Where did you used to work?”

“First Order Corporations, I used to be an architect, believe it or not. It was a good job, and then some things happened that put me and a lot of other people out of a job.” Why would Rey be asking about that? And why had Ben never heard of First Order Corporations?

“What is First Order?”

__

_Rey seemed frustrated as she typed away at her computer. She was looking for something, but Ben couldn’t see what she was doing and he knew by now not to ask about it unless Rey told him specifically what it was about. Instead he asked, “Having a bad day?”_

_“What made it obvious?” Rey asked._

_“Well, maybe the fact that you look like you’re about to kill your keyboard.”_

_“Yeah, I guess that gave it away.” She said. She still looked so frustrated. She was silent for a minute before asking, “You know what monopolies are right?”_

_“You mean the game,”_

_“No, I mean like—the people that own companies. The companies that own companies. That type of shit,”_

_“Yeah,” Ben said, “I guess so.”_

_“I hate them,” She said, “they’re so corrupt.”_

____

“First Order Corporations basically owns everything that you’ve ever put your hands on, they own businesses, towns, people. They’re a soul sucking company that is too big for it’s own good, kind of like Disney or Johnson and Johnson.”

“Right,”

“I told her that it wasn’t something that she wanted to look into, the last investigative journalist that did something like that went missing. I guess that she didn’t listen,” The girl said. “It’s better that you don’t go looking for your best friend. Now the twenty.”


	6. Three Things I Want To Know

Ben keeps telling himself three things that keep him going. These things keep him from falling asleep on the road. They keep him driving straight and not driving into a ditch on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Number one, Rey was alive recently and is most likely still alive. Number Two, whatever made her fake her death was dangerous, and she needed help. Number Three, for some reason she thought that she couldn’t go to the police for help. So, the thing that she was waiting for, the thing that she was forced to put down in code, was something so dangerous that Rey’s life could end at any moment if she didn’t get what she needed done. Ben hadn’t slept in about two days, thirteen hours, and fifty-two minutes. His head was pounding and even though he was wearing sunglasses, he felt like everything was on the brightest intensity possible.

The last time he had stayed up so long, he was at college studying for finals before he crammed so much that he had a mental breakdown. So, he knew that if he didn’t stop soon, he would breakdown and he would be forced to. He told himself that the next town over, he would have to get into the next seedy motel as soon as he possibly could.

The one that he found himself in reminded him of a place he hadn’t been to in a long time. The paint was a faded pink, the mezzanine was fading and an aroma of cheap weed and peach schnapps. He booked himself in room number nine. The motel was called Paradise, and Ben was pretty sure that teenagers and college kids used this as a place to hookup and do drugs, not that he was judging. It was out of the way; people wouldn’t find him here.

He set everything up, put everything of Rey’s under the pillow of the bed next to him and lay down on the other. He really, really needed some sleep.

__

_He found Rey under some neon lights with glitter in hair and on her face and a bruise forming on her neck, she was right next to a motel sign called ‘The Getaway’. For a second, Ben wondered if she was smoking a cigarette. Nope, it was a joint._

_“What are you doing?” He asked her. She looked like she had been crying, her cheeks were stained, and her clothes was torn but she was smiling like she had just done something that she was proud of._

_“Smoking.” Rey giggled._

_“Are you okay?”_

_“Yeah,” She shrugged, “what are you doing here?”_

_“Rose called me and said that you were pretty upset at this party that the both of you were at, but then she wouldn’t tell me what happened and just told me to find you here. Are you okay?”_

_“I’m fine, Ben.” She said. “I just got in a fight,”_

_“Oh my god, are you okay? Did you fill out a police report?”_

_“Ben,” Rey said, “I am fine. Pretend that nothing happened.” They were quiet for a second. Ben shifting on his feet, waiting for Rey to finish her joint. When she was done, he was going to get her in the car and take her home, because that’s what he did. But that’s not what happened. “I have a room for the night,” Rey told him. “You want to come in with me?”_

_“Uh—for the night?”_

_“There’s only one bed,” She said._

_“Why?”_

_“I just need someone to be next to,”_

__

Ben wasn’t sure how long he had slept for until he looked at his phone. A whole day had passed. A whole day had passed, and someone had been in his room. Someone had been in his room. Ben got up in a panic and realized that the bed next to him had been stripped bare. Rey’s things, her journals were gone. All of it was gone. The only thing that remained was his keys and his wallet, Ben turned that room upside down, and then he went into the bathroom. One the mirror written in sharpie were the words, _Stop looking,_ scrawled in handwriting that reminded Ben of a serial killer’s handwriting.

Ben stumbled outside, feeling nauseous and threw up in a bed of dried up and dead flowers. It was mostly some Red Bull and chips that he had thrown up, and not much else. But his ears were ringing, and he turned around. He had to go back inside that motel room. He had to.

His hands were shaking, and he looked at the door. It looked like someone had entered in with a key. Which means that they either stole it or they got it from whoever was working that night. Ben steeled himself up and went to the front office. He told himself that he needed to look like he hadn’t just had the worst wake up call of his life and find out who was working last night.

The front office was what you thought it would look like. Everything was old and decaying. Everything smelled like weed and the man behind the front desk looked like he hadn’t moved in decades. “Hey,” Ben said, “do you know who was working last night?”

“No one,” The man said.

“What?”

“Front desk closes at nine pm,”

“Great,” Ben was about to say more when someone else walked in the room and stood directly behind him. He looked like a normal person, ready to check out, but Ben got a different vibe from him. “Sorry,” Ben told him.

“No problem, man.” Maybe he was paranoid. Maybe he needed to go back to bed. Maybe this all was a dream and he would wake up and Rey would be okay, and he would be back there, planning to tell her how he felt about her. Ben went back and grabbed his keys and his wallet and got back in his car.

__

_Rey and Ben had gone back into that room and the two of them sat apart from each other. Ben staring at Rey and Rey staring right back at Ben. She had always had this thing for making awkward situations even more awkward. “You want to tell me what happened?” He asked her. “What you were doing?”_

_“I had a disagreement,” She said, “and the other person tried to choke me. I fought back, the other person is in jail now and that’s that. It’s been a long night.” Her voice cracked on the last part of that sentence, and the two of them sat in silence again. Ben didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. Rey was the type of person that could just switch everything off long enough to convince people that she was fine before she was alone and really broke down, because that was the type of person she was._

_But that day, Ben saw her cry. He hadn’t seen her cry in such a long time, that for a good ten seconds he paused, not knowing what was happening. Even when Rey cried, she remained composed, her tears fell but there was no sound, and her nails were digging into the meat of her palm. Then he was right by her side, and she was in his arms and she was shaking like a leaf. The two of them stayed in that bed until her muscles relaxed and she was asleep in his arms. The next morning, she got up and he hadn’t really slept at all, trying to wrap his head around what had just happened. But she smiled at him like nothing had happened the night before. “Morning,”_

_“Hey,” He yawned, “are you okay?”_

_“Yeah,” Rey shrugged, “why wouldn’t I be?” Ben didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. “It’s another day,” Rey told him, “no matter what happened the night before you just have to push on and move forward.”_

__

Ben got in his car, with his things and started moving on. “I just need to push on and move forward,” He told himself. So he did, he kept pushing on. He traveled up to a place that he would only go to because Rey used to talk about wanting to visit small towns with cool names.

__

_“Astoria,” Rey said, “I think I’d go there first,”_

_“Why do you want to go to some small town? That sounds boring,”_

_“You don’t get it,” Rey said, “small towns always have secrets in them. I want to find them.”_

_“Why?”_

_“I’ve always been good at finding secrets,” Rey told him._

_“And keeping them,”_

_“What is that supposed to mean?”_

_“It’s just—you’ve changed since…”_

_“People change, Ben.”_

_“I know.”_

_“Are you saying that you don’t like me anymore?” Rey asked._

_“No, it’s not that. I’ll always like you, you know that right? I’m just worried about you. You never tell me anything. I just want to know that you’re alright.” Rey smiled at him and grabbed his hand, “I’m okay.” She told him. “Now do you believe me? I just get lonely when you’re not around and people don’t really like me much so I don’t have many people to talk to.”_

_“What about Rose’s funeral? How are you handling that?” Rey’s face went blank and she looked back at the map._

_“Astoria,” She said, “I feel like that’d be the first small town that I’d visit.”_

__

Without any traffic it would have taken around two hours, but there was a back up and it lasted five instead. Ben sat in his car without any music playing, just the ringing in his ears and the pounding in his head. He was so confused; he had no idea what was going on right now and what had just happened? Someone had stolen all of Rey’s journals, and he didn’t know the first place to go and find them.

It was an hour away from Astoria when he stumbled into a gas station called _The Juniper,_ he thought it was a weird name but the more he looked at it, the more he thought that maybe this station had once been a restaurant or a bar or something like that. It was too fancy and clean on the inside to be just any old rinky dink gas station halfway in the middle of nowhere. _Okay, he needed to focus,_ he told himself, _he needed to give himself three things that he needed to do in order to make headway in finding Rey. Three things that he needed to know._

Number one, where was the last most recent place that she had been seen.

Number two, what was Rey investigating that led her to have to disappear in the first place?

And lastly, the one that freaked him out the most, who stole her journals right out from under him?

Three things that he needed to know.

He could do this.

He was going to find her.


	7. Chapter 7

Ben didn’t know what to do now that he didn’t have the journals, but he had a feeling that Astoria had something in store for him. So that’s where he went. It was weird, driving this long by yourself. Every once and a while he had to pinch his thigh to keep him awake and convince himself that he wasn’t going in circles, because that’s what this felt like. Going in circles, over and over again and not getting any answers. All he knew was that someone broke into his motel room and told him that he needed to stop looking and stole the journals that he had of Rey’s. Now he had nothing and felt like he was at square one again.

Maybe he should turn around and go home, maybe this was a useless thing and he should just forget about it.

That was a train of thought that he didn’t entertain for very long, because even if he was freaked out, he remembered the hope that he had felt in his heart when he had learned that Rey was still alive, and he told himself that he had to keep going forward. He needed to find her and he needed answered. And that thing inside his heart, those emotions that told him he was utterly and hopelessly in love with this woman lit something in him. He had to move on.

He had to keep looking.

No matter the cost, he needed to know that Rey was okay. He made it to Astoria. Ben had never slept in his car before, but this time he did. He didn’t really trust going into seedy motels right now. So, he found a place where truckers seemed to sleep and parked at the edge, laying down in his car and closing his eyes. This time, he only slept four hours, but it was better than nothing. He had a long day ahead of him.

__

Trying to find a missing person based on intuition was something that he never thought he would have to do, but then again, lately there were a lot of things that Ben had to do that he had never seen himself doing. He had always assumed that he would have a really boring life. That had been okay with him. This—well this might be a little bit too exciting.

He was pretty sure that there was someone following him. Then again, he might be seeing things. It always seemed to be two different men that he kept swearing that he was seeing. One was a red headed man that was always wearing a brown jacket and a hat, the only reason he knew the color of his hair was because of a beard. The other was a shorter, less noticeable brunette man. They always seemed to be in the same place that Ben was in. When he went to a McDonalds to get himself coffee and a breakfast, they were there.

Ben had no idea what to think or what to do, but he drove around a few back roads before he was sure that there was no one following him, and then he looked for places that he thought that Rey might go. He ended up at the port, he had no idea why, but something about it felt right. And there the red head was again, but without the less noticeable brunette man. He was sitting down on a bench overlooking the port on a trail. He turned and looked Ben straight in the eyes.

Ben froze. Part of him felt like he had to get back in his car and drive as far away from here as he possibly could. The red headed man motioned for him to come closer, and Ben knew that something was wrong, he told himself that he shouldn’t be doing this right now, but it was so weird and different that he thought that perhaps this had something to do with Rey, and he needed to go forward. He needed to get answers. Rey’s voice echoed in his head, _“You know how people say that curiosity killed the cat? I think that that’s just a way to keep people from learning but uh—in some cases it’s true. In some cases you just shouldn’t look into things.”_ Ben’s hands were shaking, but he took a step forward.

His heart was pounding in his chest but he walked forward, until he was at the edge of the bench. “Ah, Ben Solo.” The red head said. Ben wanted to ask how this man knew who he was. “Sit. We have a lot to talk about.”

__

A Day After Rey’s Death

Rey had been getting ready to go out with Ben when an FBI Agent had contacted her and told her that the First Order was interested in her death. From there, everything seemed to be happening in fast motion. Rey was told that she could not contact Ben, even though she so desperately wanted to.

And then her death was faked, and she was moved into witness protection program. Her phone was taken to make sure that she wouldn’t try and contact Ben, and Rey was supposed to stay in a small room in a motel at the edge of town and never go out until they were able to find a way to get her out of town safely. That’s how everything was supposed to go. “When will it be okay to go home?” Rey had asked the FBI Agent. “I can’t just live the rest of my life on the run, I have a job, I have friends—” _I have someone I have feelings for at home who thinks that I’m dead._

“You’re going to have to get used to it,” The man said. Rey was silent for a long time after that, because she knew that the man was right, but she didn’t want to accept it. She didn’t want to accept that she might never see her best friend ever again or get to live a normal life.

“I never thought that my job would get me here,” She said to no one in particular, she needed someone to talk to, and the only person there was the FBI Agent that was guarding her in her room.

“I know, ma’am. But in all fairness, you did help us with one of our biggest investigations at the bureau. So, that’s got to count for something. You’re a hero.”

“I never wanted to be a hero,”

__

_Rey had always been the type of person who could just read a person by guessing. She had an intuition that was unlike any other, and you could see it in her eyes, she knew what people were. She could tell when a person was good or bad and she used that to her advantage. When she started looking for a more permanent job, she was barely nineteen. At first, she started doing undercover work for a private detective that liked to pretend that he was in the actual police force._

_A lot of the times, she was in danger and there was something about that she liked, but she never told Ben what her job was and when she came home with bruises and scrapes, she could tell that he was worried. So, she moved to something else. Investigative journalism. She was really good at her job too, she knew the right questions to ask, and she knew where to look when someone was lying. She was one of the youngest reporters at her publication._

_She started investigating the First Order a year before she had to fake their death. It was one of the companies that seemed to own almost everything in the United States, but no one seemed to know anything about it. She found a lot more than she was bargaining for._


	8. Chapter 8

It took Ben a few minutes to process everything, and then he sat down. The man right next to him sighed and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes. “You smoke?”

“No,”

“Right, you don’t mind if I do?”

“No,” Ben said. He watched as the other man pulled out a lighter and lit his cigarette. Ben was nervous, but he took a chance. “Are you the one that stole the journals from my room?”

“No,” The man shook his head, he took a drag on his cigarette before he said, “but I know who did.”

“You know who did.”

“Yes, and I’m going to tell you some shit in confidence, because I feel for you, I really do. But I want you to know what you’re up against before you go any further. And I want you to know that after this moment, the two of us are going to be on opposite sides and I will not help you any further. Even if you beg for it.”

“Um, okay. That’s pretty dramatic, but I guess I understand.”

“Okay, good.” He said. “Now, before I say anything you have to promise me you won’t ask questions. This has to be quick and I will explain everything but you just got to listen, I’m not in the mood for questions anyway.”

“I—”

“Do you want to hear about your friend or not?”

“I do,”

“Then do you agree,”

“Yes,” He had no choice but to agree.

“Good,” The red headed man sighed, taking another drag. Ben wanted to point out that he had just said that he didn’t have a lot time and he was taking time to smoke, but he needed to hear this. “Your friend, Rey Johnson or whatever the fuck her name is, she was investigating some pretty heavy shit that she shouldn’t have been investigating.” Ben had no idea what that meant, but he was guessing that she had done something like this. “There is this company, the First Order. You might have heard of it; you might not have. It’s basically like Johnson and Johnson but like—corrupt as shit and they own almost everything. They probably own the company that makes your phone. Hell, they own so much shit that even their own employees don’t know everything that they own.”

Another drag.

“Rey found out some things about our company,” He said, “and before you freak out because I’m one of them, let me tell you that I don’t agree with the way that things are going. I’m just trying to help out where I can, and I can’t exactly do that if I’m dead. So—this is what I’m going to do.”

Ben didn’t say anything, he just listened like he was told to. “The First Order is corrupt. It likes controlling everything from politicians to civilians. It owns whole towns, and the town that Rey started to look into was a company owned research town that just disappeared off of the map because of the First Order, she learned too much and is now in the sights of the First Order because of the things she knows. She’s been instrumental in taking down a few other corrupt companies too, and people are nervous. So, she faked her death. For about a week, we thought she was actually dead but her FBI Agent screwed up, he was killed and Rey’s been on the run ever since.”

“You’re one of the people that’s going to kill her, why are you helping me?”

“Because,” The man sighed impatiently, clearly annoyed by the question, “I want you to find her before I do. I don’t actually want to kill anyone. I think that if you have the right information, you’ll probably find her. Now,” The man passed him a folder. “You have thirty minutes to get out of this parking lot before he sees you, and if he does you and I are both dead.”

Ben took the folder from him and stood there for a second, “What are you doing? Go, now. Before someone sees you.” Ben went, because that was all that he could do. Leave like he was told with the folder in his hands.

He put a good distance between himself in the port that day, and he checked into a motel. This time he made sure that he was on the second floor, made sure that the motel was better quality and that both locks were locked. When he was in, he took the folder and sat down on his bed, nervous to look at the contents inside. He wasn’t sure what he’d find, and he knew that when he did, his perception of Rey might not be the same as it was when he first started this.

But hopefully, there would also be answers. He sat there for a minute, the manila folder in his hand. It was thick and weighty, and it felt like it was burning a hole in his hand.

“Everything is going to be okay,” He told himself. There was no one else there to help him and Rey was not there. He was going to find her. He opened the folder.

__

_Rey had a habit of overcompensating after she pissed Ben off. It was something that she had gotten from being in group homes and bouncing place to place before she had found her actual family. Every once and a while, when she kept secrets and Ben would find out, she would overapologize. Tell him that she was sorry for things. This time she said it before Ben even knew what was wrong. “I’m sorry,”_

_“What are you sorry for?” Ben asked when she came over._

_“I couldn’t sleep,” She said, “I had to—I needed to be with someone.” It was almost midnight. “I needed to be with you.”_

_“Come in,” Ben opened the door and Rey walked right through it, “what’s wrong?” Rey didn’t say anything, she just sat down on the couch. Ben sat down next to her. “Rey?”_

_“I just—I’m not doing good right now.” She admitted. “Things are hard, and I didn’t tell you at the motel or after because I didn’t want to be a burden, but there’s a lot of things going on at work that I’m losing sleep over and I kind of hate myself for it, but I just—I want to be with the one person that makes me feel happy. You know?”_

_“And why are you saying sorry for that?”_

_“Because I didn’t know if you were about to fall asleep,”_

_“No, Rey. I wasn’t. I’m up.” She nodded silently and sat back a little more. “Do you want to talk about it?”_

_“No,”_

_“Maybe it’ll help,”_

_“I just want to watch some shitty Netflix show and fall asleep next to you right now,” Ben nodded._

_“Okay then, that’s what we’ll do.”_


	9. Chapter 9

Rey had met her fair share of small men.

Alistair Snoke was absolutely one of those men. She started researching him about three years ago, and she had never imagined that her research would actually go as far as it did. But what she found on the surface level was that Alistair Snoke was a narcissistic billionaire that people didn’t know much about, other than he owned his own atrociously-gold plated office and he was verbally abusive to anyone and everyone he met.

People at work had warned her about looking into him, it was just something that you _didn’t do,_ Rey assumed that it meant that he had a proclivity for suing people to hell and back, but no. It was much darker than that.

It started with the women disappearing. Surprisingly First Order Industries also owned several makeup and vitamin companies that were quite popular in America, some women had alleged that there was abuse going on in the work place, and that he had been part of it. Then, they all disappeared, coming back up dead. All the same way.

It was an apparent heroine overdose.

Rey didn’t see the likelihood of thirteen women from different states that had never met each other, some with kids and families, all dying of heroin overdoses. Then she learned more.

When Snoke went to college, his father Palpatine was caught and arrested for assisting in mass suicide. He was a racist cult leader that lead his following to drink poison because the world was going to end, Palpatine was also the founder of one of the country’s largest pyramid schemes in America in the 1970s, Rey wasn’t surprised that a man like Snoke was the child of a man like Sheev Palpatine.

She found out more, Alistair Snoke liked murder. It was clear that he liked manipulation, but all of his competition seemed to disappear around him. He was elitist, he was good at hiding things, he never was seen outside of that big gold-plated tower of his, he was an enigma.

Rey dove deeper.

Until she dove too deep, and she ended up seeing her two Witness Protection agents shot dead in front of her. She shook violently for a minute, but then steeled herself as an old man walked through the door. “Ah,” he said, “the young Miss Rey. I’ve heard so much about you.”

She looked at him with wide eyes, seeing Snoke stand in front of her, and then said, “I thought you would be taller.” Before all hell broke loose.

Rey still can’t remember all of the details of how she got out of there.

It hurt too much.

__

Ben wasn’t sure why he held his breath for so long after he opened the folder. His heart was beating irregularly, and he knew that he had to snap out of it. He had to focus, so he steeled himself and took one deep breath in and one deep breath out before looking down at the information in front of him. There was a basic profile on Rey, weight, height, eye color, hair color, race. The standard type of thing that you would see on someone’s drivers license, but it went deeper than that. There was her social security number, credit card number, the addresses of the foster homes that she had been in before she got permanently adopted. And then there was a list of names that had been used as aliases by Rey, a list of locations and four different profiles that had been made by Witness Protection.

This is what alarmed Ben the most, because he hadn’t known that she had been in the Witness Protection program for a while, and then it seemed like they lost her a month before Ben had received information that Rey was still alive. What happened? Was she dead now? Was Ben too late? He told himself that he couldn’t think that.

He didn’t know where Rey was, she could still be alive. He looked more into the file. Rey was indeed a prolific investigative journalist who had worked closely with the police and FBI on multiple occasions under an alias. In fact, her investigative work was so good that there was record within the file of her getting offered a position within the FBI that she promptly turned down. Why? The file didn’t state that, Ben kept reading.

Because he was seeing a side of his friend that he had never seen before. 

__

**_Two Months Later_ **

Rey had a habit of counting how many people were in a room when she entered it, as well as counting the exits and places to hide. She had always been like this, even before she had to fake her death and then eventually fake her death again to run from whoever at First Order Industries wanted her dead. It was a skill that she had learned as a kid after abusive home after abusive home had left it’s mark on her. It left her with the thought of knowing that you were never safe, no matter where you were.

The only place where Rey had found much solace was in nearly abandoned truck stops or hole-in-the-wall diners with facades made of crumbling bricks or peeling paint. One time she told the owner of this pie shop that nobody that she needed to hide from her stalker ex-boyfriend, who just so happened to be a police officer, the woman let her sleep in the back for a week and gave her free pie to eat.

That’s when she knew that until she could get to a border and on a flight out of the country, this is where she would stay. The First Order tended to own things in the city, and when the Witness Protection program had her in its custody, they had put her right in the middle of it. That was why both of the agents that tried to protect her were dead.

She couldn’t stay in one place for long though, otherwise that would get people killed. After she had left that woman’s pie shop she was on the run again, and she had paid someone to send proof to Ben that she was alive. She didn’t know if they actually did it or not, she just wanted to let him know that she wasn’t dead, she didn’t abandon him.

She wasn’t thinking that somehow, he would come after her, and he would be right on her trail. In fact, she hadn’t known that he was following her until Armitage Hux met her by the port in Astoria one day. “I wanted to warn you that there’s someone else following you,” He said.

“More of your goons?” She asked. She glanced around furtively, expecting there to be a sniper or someone to come up and drug her and kidnap her. That didn’t happen. Maybe Hux was telling her the truth.

“No,” He said, “someone you care about.”

Rey’s heart dropped into her stomach. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” He said, “I tried to my best to scare him off, but I don’t think it’s going to help.”

“Why are you trying to help me?” Rey asked.

“Because I would rather the casualties stay to a minimum, I don’t like getting messy and we both know that you’re a dead woman walking. But he’s not,”

“So,” She said, “when is your CEO going to take me out?”

“Not today,” He said, “but there are people. Don’t accept any drinks or food from restaurants if you want to live a little bit longer.”

“Great,” She said, “thank you for the heads up.”

“That’s all I can do for you,” He said, “now I would go, Rey. Before someone sees you.” After that, Rey left.

She ran from Astoria as quick as she could, this time she wanted to be seen. She wanted to make sure that no one got anywhere near Ben. She subsisted off of packs of Cheetos and Lays, drinking from those big bottles of water that truckers used. A lot of the time she would park in the woods, off the beaten path but close enough to wear people on the road would hear her scream if someone tried to attack her.

She stole one of the blades from the display of a gas station and had that in her hand while she slept, it’s big serrated blade was the only thing that brought her comfort. Most of the time, she didn’t sleep though. Her hands would shake and sometimes the lines on the road would swerve and become one. But honestly she wasn’t afraid of dying in a car crash, that wouldn’t be as bad as what Snoke had in store for her.

__

Ben wasn’t sure what to think after he looked through the contents of the folder, all he knew was that Rey had been researching a corrupt company that seemed to own at least half of America that he had never heard of, and had caught them in the act of illegal activities. I.e, moving funds offshore, shuffling money through crime syndicates, and murdering someone.

Ben had never seen a picture of an actual dead body in his life, but he saw pictures of the agents that had been protecting her, shot dead in a house, and then hacked to bits. He dry heaved for about an hour before he could regain his composure.

The amount of things in that file ran deep, and now that Ben had seen them all, locations of drug houses that they owned, illegal types of testing on products that they owned that bordered on torture, paying off police officers to look the other way when one of their employees got in trouble with the law, he knew that she had been investigating something big.

Ben couldn’t sleep that night.

It was four o’clock in the morning when he got a call to his motel room on the landline, he picked it up, thinking that it was going to be the front desk, but it wasn’t. For a minute, it was just breathing. Ben felt tempted to say something, “Rey?” Was the first question. He could have sworn that the other person started to cry.

“Ben?”

It was her.


End file.
